Jozef Imrich has his finger on the pulse of any irony of interest and shares his findings to keep you in-the-know with the savviest trend setters and infomaniacs.
''I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.''
-Kurt Vonnegut

Sunday, July 27, 2008

A book released in Poland on Monday by historians Slawomir Cenckiewicz and Piotr Gontarczyk claims to offer evidence that political leader and Nobel laureate Lech Walesa was an informant for the country's secret service in the 70s. Co-author Gontarczyk said in an interview, "Life is complicated sometimes. He was a young deckhand then."A German newspaper says Walesa "has denied the allegations and called the institute's authors 'fanatics' with libellous claims. He has threatened legal action and said he will soon release his own book to tell his side of the story." The paper notes that "during his presidency in 2000, Walesa won a court ruling that said he was not a spy. But opponents, including Polish President Lech Kaczynski, say they know he had worked for communists. New Book In Poland Claims Walesa Was Communist Informer

When communist fiction is not enough Professionals Get Publicity and Opportunity Through Blogs We've mentioned it before as a by-product of a good blog, but it's becoming more and more prevalent. News media, book publishers, and trade organization publishers are reading professional service firm blogs and like what they see. Accountants and lawyers are getting visibility they never anticipated.

Two accounting bloggers I know have been contacted by Wiley about working on books! One is Tracy Coenen of Sequence Inc whose http://www.sequence-inc.com/fraudfiles/ Fraud Files blog has been around for awhile and is excellent! She wrote me recently:"Just wanted to let you know that all my blogging and marketing has paid off! I just got a contract with Wiley to write a book on fraud! Who'da thunk that a little person like me would get a contract with a great big publisher for Wiley, for a book that I've not even written yet!!! The book is "Essentials of Corporate Fraud Management." It's geared for C-Level executives, attorneys, and other professionals who need quick knowledge on a particular topic.

I have been doing so much cool stuff. writing articles all over the place, getting involved in a high-profile investigation....business has never been better. (And has never been more fun too!)

• through blogs, professionals can even bypass the cutting room floor, and get their message out to their target audience on their own terms. It's exciting stuff! Practioners are better able to develop media relationships. ; [Online newspaper journalists offer networking & PR opportunities to blogging lawyers ; You may think you have the worst boss in the Western Hemisphere, but if you've never had to dodge a cell phone, been fired over a breakfast pastry or had your work referred to as "a complete and utter mess," you probably have it better than you realize. Famously (and famous) bad bosses ]• · Blog father - Rick of the the Prelinger Archive; Online digital environments are inviting all of us to participate actively in our own learning No longer tuned in to master's voice • · The issue of parliamentary salaries, allowances and benefits generates public discussion and attracts media opinion. This background note provides relevant data, hyperlinks and documents pertaining to the entitlements of Australian federal parliamentarians. Parliamentary allowances, benefits and salaries of office ; Who's to blame for the sorry state of Question Time Dorothy Dix meets Harry Jenkins; Who is to blame for current housing fiasco? Did you know that 71% of people cite the housing crisis, debt and financial difficulty as the primary reason they are currently homeless? More than a bed: Sydney's homeless speak out • · · Private equity player Luke Johnson at Risk Capital Partners, "buyer" of Borders UK, is rumored to have bid for Border's Paperchase unit--though the rumor has his 40 million pound bid well below the price sought. A UK retail trade publication notes that "Paperchase operates 40 percent of its outlets as concessions within Borders UK stores, so a deal without Mr. Johnson seems unlikely." But WH Smith is among others thought to have offered. Bids Begin for Paperchase ; More Books by ABCtales Authors ; Chasing the Dragon's Long Tail Kangaroo a.k.a. Klokan: The Kindness of Strangers• · · · Blogs can make, or unmake, your brand Kryptonite ; The lesson here is clear: if you want to create a proactive blog that is going to lead to the creation of value for your brand, be very, very careful. … Be careful with so10 cial news sites like Digg or Reddit. They may crash your server and/or cost you lots of money by driving tons of useless traffic in short ... Steps to Success on the ’Net Without SEO • · · · · When your blog is up and running, you can register it with blog directories such as Amatomu or Afrigator. But be careful. You might run the risk of ruining ... BLOGGING has become the latest craze among young and internet-savvy people, but is it something you should consider as an alternative way to get your business’s name out there? Blogging allows anyone to download software and run their own newsletter online. It has become so popular that there are now over 70 million blogs on the internet Blogging: an alternative marketing method ; What good is link love if you don’t know how many links love you? Today I want to talk to you about some of the places where you can go to track down your links. We are going to look at two traditional search engines and two blog search engines How Many Links Could a Link Lover Love? ; "You really want to be careful about your personal use of the company's email system," Flynn said. "A growing number of employers are putting policies in ... Work and Net• · · · · · A jealous husband is believed to have murdered the mother of their two children and then killed himself after she told the world via Facebook that they were splitting up Facebook murder rocks 'perfect little family' ; Feeling blue? Mung beans, lobster, turkey, asparagus, sunflower seeds, cottage cheese, pineapple, tofu, spinach and bananas could lift your spirits 10 foods to make you happy

Monday, July 21, 2008

Jonathan Coe explains his writing process I stare at the computer until I get bored, which takes about five minutes. Then, if I'm feeling energetic, I'll get up and make a cup of coffee, or, if I'm feeling lazy, I'll start randomly messing around on the internet or playing card games on screen. I've just discovered Spider Solitaire and can sense a whole new world of distraction opening up for me.-Sf author Thomas M Disch committed suicide at his apartment on July 4. Patrick Nielsen Hayden's eulogy paints a picture of a man who was brilliant, noble, foolish, difficult and angry. I only knew him through his fiction, from which I learned a great deal…- This whole romantic myth of the artist the person laying around at midnight with a fag and half a bottle of scotch, it's just bulldust-Since mid April, there have been 943 reported cases of salmonellosis nationwide caused by Salmonella Saintpaul - Salmonellosis Outbreak in Certain Types of Tomatoes

I just discovered that Dubravka Ugresic has a website. I am slow. And it is stylish and functional, it's like a goddamn miracle. Dubravka Ugresic

You Don’t Know Me: But Is the Sky Falling? Pour Some Sugar On Cold River Ira Glass, host of the radio and television program This American Life, claims that nonfiction is the most important and impressive art form of our day: "We're living in an age of great nonfiction writing, in the same way that the 1920s and 30s were a golden age for American popular song. Giants walk among us, Cole Porters and George Gershwins and Duke Ellingtons of nonfiction storytelling.

To commemorate and canonize this golden age, Glass compiled an anthology of some of the best nonfiction writing. The paperback original, published last fall, with proceeds benefiting a nonprofit tutoring center, received prime display space in many bookstores. Its title: The New Kings of Nonfiction.

• Where Are the Queens of Nonfiction? The New Kings of Nonfiction. ; [Maybe Book sections in newspapers are just dated. Lee Abrams' Permanent Cloud; God’s Law—is tricky to keep—born again you must be, yeah - Wrapped in its peculiar atmosphere, as if draped in clouds, I walked entranced to my desk at about 4am and typed it on to the screen. The story was called "Nadine at Forty". In its subject matter, in its tone, its setting, it bore no relation to anything I have ever written before or since. It extended itself easily into paragraphs, requiring little correction and not really admitting any; how could my waking self revise what my sleeping self had imagined? Hilary Mantel writes about the time she dreamt a story.]• · Critics have become bemoaners. Nobody's a Critic ; While publishing Opium ; Tree House Media Project Debuts. Self-reliance for angry journalists, preached by a former member of the tribe. Plus: Last gasp of the curmudgeon class. Big Daddy Newspaper Has Gone and Left Journalism• · China’s economy will surpass that of the United States by 2035 and be twice its size by midcentury, a new report by Albert Keidel concludes. China’s rapid growth is driven by domestic demand—not exports—and will sustain high single-digit growth rates well into this century. In China’s Economic Rise—Fact and Fiction, Keidel examines China’s likely economic trajectory and its implications for global commercial, institutional, and military leadership (vis Bespacific) China Will Surpass U.S. Economically by 2035, Double by Midcentury ; Like many others who watched the news in the 1990s, the authors were dismayed by the thousands of hours devoted to “infotainment” stories such as the O.J. Simpson trial Tabloid Justice: Criminal Justice in an Age of Media Frenzy and The Star Chamber: How Celebrities Go Free and their Lawyers Become Famous; • · · I guess it’s gaining currency from the book of the same name by the ex-Amazon customer service guy Bill Price and David Jaffe. I get the idea. If you eliminate all the problems around customer service, your customers won’t have to contact you and that will be a good thing. You transform any customer relationship you’ve created back into transactions and save costs. There's a thought out there that the best service is no service at all ; I am a great believer in and/and. When two seemingly opposing ideas appear in the market or a couple of paradoxes seem to conflict your business, I say give room to them both. It’s by embracing paradox that a new third idea may develop that could move us all forward. I’m not talking about convergence here but the process of change. The paradox in its simplest form: paper v digital• · · · We're actually projecting this year that the North Pole may be free of ice for the first time [in history] National Geographics: North Pole May Be Ice Free for First Time This Summer Arctic won't see its first completely ice-free summer until somewhere between 2013 and 2030; amazon drought nearing climate tipping point• · · · · Blogging and citizen journalism provides an alternative to the media delivering government and corporate spin as news.Raging against rising Internet repression; Modern media is tailor-made for propaganda, spreading often unchallenged values for financial profit or political influence. Learning rites and wrongs • · · · · · Slovakia joins the eurozone next year, becoming only the second ex-communist country to do so – an achievement many thought unlikely and one that continues to elude its former Soviet-bloc neighbours. For a small, export-oriented economy, the coming years could be difficult, but Slovakia has already beaten the odds by becoming one of Europe’s most striking success stories Economy: The tiger that beat the odds ; George W. Bush once got Slovakia and Slovenia mixed up. Infamy, in the two capitals Bratislava and Ljubljana, but understandable elsewhere in the world, where these two benign, pretty countries must compete for a place on the tourist map. The Slovak capital (pop. 450,000), while immeasurably more attractive than when the communists handed it over in 1989, is merely “cute” by comparison with nearby Prague, Budapest and Vienna. The High Tatra mountains, while scenic, stretch for barely 50 kilometers; the highest peak, Gerlach, is fully 2,000 metres short of Mont Blanc. And so on. You can sell the Tatras. Nowhere in Europe is there a lowland airport so close to a mountain chain. You can be at your hotel in 15 minutes, whereas in the Alps you may have to drive for an hour or more. Our plan is to rebuild the Tatras, or perhaps to reclaim them from the ashes You can sell the Tatras

Monday, July 14, 2008

Many Happy Returns - Happy Birthday to Steve M and Christopher as well as Lydia C - the pillars in my life ...

In the early days of this blog, I posted a link to Wikipedia and its founder Jimmy Wales in The Guardian: IGNORANCE and poverty, which go hand in hand with totalitarianism and control, continue to be widespread. Yet it turns out that as we have given a voice to millions of people with a mission to build "the sum of all human knowledge", nearly all of them are able to do so with kindness, compassion and thoughtfulness. Each of us, coming to a project like Wikipedia for our own reasons, can help to build something that, I think, shows the promise of the future, our dreams of peace, to be within reach …

The old management rule to measure what matters is a good one. The problem is that the stuff that matters is always the hardest to measure, but we can't let that stop us. Let's measure up, rather than measure down... The Happiness Challenge

Birth of JoyThe Power of the Personal: Peak Performance

The consolation of philosophy is needed as much now in the corporate world as it was in the time of Aristotle and Socrates and possibly more so. Lessons in ethical decision making and business ideas from the great philosophers. Articles includes discussion of example of courses run for the executives of the Dutch tax office (Tax and Customs Administration).

• Philosophers,; [; On the back of a belief that lessons learned in one area may be applicable in others experts in differing fields were canvassed for their vies and practical recommendations on improving efficiency and productivity in the key areas of management, staff, individual growth, process and energy use Lessons in efficiency and productivity ]• · In this companion to last year's white paper, IDC again calibrates the size (bigger than first thought) and the growth (faster than expected) of the digital universe through 2011 The diverse and exploding digital universe: an updated forecast of worldwide information growth through 2011; When most people think about the Internal Revenue Service, the terms user-friendly and accessible are not the first ones that spring to mind. However, Richard Spires, IRS' deputy commissioner of operations support, hopes that will change after the service completes its massive information technology modernization effort to integrate older systems and make its filings electronic. Spires is leading an effort to take the tax agency online through a series of modernisation efforts that are projected to have all IRS forms on the agency's e-platform by 2014 IRS modernisation webpage; IRS bullish about modernization ; The line between work and play is becoming increasingly blurred. So it's a good idea to be careful about the personal information you allow to go online. Information published on the internet is there for a very long time and you have very limited control over it. It's about who knows you • · · CIOs who are serious about developing leaders in their group have to be willing to invest time in their people and to give them opportunities to grow, even if that means letting them fail sometimes How to develop the next generation of IT leaders ; To successfully embed corporate responsibility and sustainability within organisations, there needs to be a focus on developing the mindset and skills of individual managers, rather than simply introducing new policies and procedures (pdf) Leadership for sustainable organisations • · · · By increasing openness and collaboration at the management level and bridging communication gaps, management teams, particularly in IT, will lead by example. This will have a trickle down effect that increases communication throughout the entire organisation Secrets of successful IT teams: socially connected employees ; Workplace communities have the potential to transform knowledge work and talent management - the cornerstones of our knowledge based economy. From the anointed few to the collective many • · · · ·, Vicki Culpin, 360º - the Ashridge journal, Spring 2008, 5p. Adequate memory allows an individual to function within a fast and ever changing business world, but a really good memory allows an individual to excel - in terms of impact, learning and decision making. This article recommends proven strategies to improve managers' memories. From goldfish to elephant - make your MARC in business: memory techniques; The Greater Manchester Police force is looking for friends - on Facebook British police use Facebook to gather evidence; Strategy draft signals intent on cybercrime • · · · · · Newly appointed New Zealand government CIO Laurence Millar made his first post on the State Services "In Development" blog yesterday, sharing his ideas about transformed government. Millar writes that technology has always been disruptive and that information technology can be a catalyst for change in government. New government CIO posts first blog entry ; Laurence Millar ; This study defines the emerging discipline of 'customer strategy' in the 21st century, and shows how the insights of citizens can help your agency make more informed decisions, design and deliver more successful policies and programs, and improve customer service (PDF) One size fits few: using customer insight to transform government

Rats in the ranks: ALP in turmoil T HE war within NSW Labor has intensified with senior ministers turning on the ALP general secretary, Karl Bitar, and his followers, accusing them of attempting to "tear down" the State Government.

The criticisms come after the Treasurer, Michael Costa, pulled out of a Labor fund-raiser citing an "unprecedented and underhanded campaign" by Mr Bitar and the NSW head office to destabilise the Premier, Morris Iemma.

• A new Labour chapter?; [; ]• · The way we select our "leaders".... "Every noble work is at first impossible"...Thomas Carlyle..... "The driving passion that has overwhelmingly governed my life, is the unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind - caused by people for their own personal gain, regardless of how severe the pain - intentionally and maliciously inflicted on innocent others."...UOJ Memoirs. Arts Journal Blog ; All great people are only "one" person! • · The film industry in Australia is a high-risk industry. Most films produced in Australia are only marginally profitable. Eighty percent of films released each year in the United States lose money. The Vice President of the Bank of America in 1981 was even more blunt: [T]ake any 160 pictures and 7 will lose money, 2 will break even and 1 will make money The art of being in two places, and 11 jobs, at once ... ; • · · SO WILL Peter Hall buy The Bulletin, the 128-year-old magazine that was finally killed off in January after a lingering circulation illness? New Bulletin if Australia wants it, too ; Peter Hall puts his money where his mouth is, writes Steve Meacham. From environmental pioneer to party faithful … Peter Hall has applied to become a Conservative candidate in Britain, where he spends eight months of the year. He is the millionaire fund manager whose company invests only in ethical enterprises that don't harm the environment. The Australian who gives away a quarter of his personal income to charities and other worthy causes. The save-the-rainforest pioneer who organised an anti-whaling protest outside the Japanese Embassy in London this year, "which got a bit scary". The Paul Keating fan who denounces Brendan Nelson's plan to cut petrol excise as "idiotic".. The Conservative conservationist • · · · A FRIEND of the family of late motor racing champion Peter Brock has been linked to a series of allegedly illegal investment schemes which have netted more than $35 million from 350 investors Peter Brock and Tax Haven; Book review: 'The Trillion Dollar Meltdown' reveals the failings of some can have devastating repercussions on many. A whole new level of crazy • · · · · THE Rudd Government has finally revealed that it will impose limits on Chinese takeovers of Australian mining companies as it grapples with a $30 billion wave of Chinese foreign investment proposals Treasurer slams gate on Chinese raids ; WAYNE Swan has signalled his readiness to block acquisitions of controlling stakes in Australian resource companies by Australia's resource customers, a move that comes amid an unprecedented run of foreign investment applications from Chinese state-owned companies Swan warns off sovereign clients who seek to own suppliers

Thursday, July 10, 2008

What do I like most about blogging? Moving on. Being part of the flow of ideas and inspiration. Sometimes it feels as though I’m on a ship leaving posts behind in my wake as I keep my eyes on the horizon for what’s coming up. I am sure I’m not the only one to respond to blogging in this way Blogging with Wal-Mart

July 08 Australia rated tourist hotspot by US travellersSydney is voted fourth best city in the world Indeed Australia is the hearty gift to the world. With Mal we have covered the country far and wide – Molong where June was born is the best kept secret as are places around the Blue Mountains such as Blackheath’s Glenella BB and Restaurant Gareth and Kate of Glenella fame

Australia has again been rated a tourist hotspot by US travellers, with Sydney voted fourth best city in the world in a new magazine survey. US travel magazine Travel + Leisure released the results of its World's Best Awards today, with Bangkok taking out the top spot on the World's Best City list. Buenos Aires and Cape Town were voted second and third, while Sydney came in fourth after being ranked fifth last year.

• Lucky Country: Sydney climbs back up the ladder of tourist popularity; [World tourism growth continues to outstrip a stagnant Australian industry Where the bloody hell are they?; THEY packed their Bibles and rosary beads along with their bedrolls, sleeping bags, guitars and woolly beanies. Loudly and proudly they proclaimed their nationalities, wearing vibrant national colours and carrying flags with the broadest of smiles. [The mobile device dubbed the Jesus Phone is about to have its second coming. The iPhone 3G, the new incarnation of Apple's first foray into the mobile handset business, will go on sale in 22 countries on Friday] The flock descends from everywhere - The 'Jesus' phone has a second coming]• · Courtesy of Polish Victor - Made Mal Smile … Sikh dancing; Compliments of Polish Christopher Aboriginal Zorba • · The Income Tax department and RBI would perhaps like to know from where Pankaj Oswal got all the seed money, especially when his father’s group has been a loan defaulter for long Oswal; Legal doubts cloud the rise of the awesome Oswals • · · Nothing deters Abhey Oswal from talking big--not even the size of his past failures. A Team BT investigation. Sinking at home, Abhey Oswal beefs up son’s Australian plant ; The Dreambagger • · · · In the Attraction Economy, design is King. Well, Queen too, for that matter. We are way beyond modernism’s rubric of ‘form follows function’ Design to feel for; The Daily Telegraph just published their ranking of the world's top 50 restaurants. I believe restaurants are totally personal (eating is an emotional experience after all) and, as I've been to a few on the list, here's an assessment based on my personal experience.. Restaurant Review: The Best of the Best • · · · · How I Realized that Amazon’s Kindle and Sony’s E-Reader Were Exceeding Sales Estimates Looks Like a Million To MEdia Dragon; Publishers (and fans) increasingly expect and hope that top fiction authors will issue a new book on regular basis, but the Boston Globe says writers are complaining about the pressure. Patricia Cornwell says : "The Scarpetta [manuscript] that's due out Oct. 7 is due in a few weeks, because they have to reserve the storefront real estate and pay for it. If I don't get the book turned in on time, they'll be freaking out. If I miss my deadline, I miss the entire year. Sometimes there's an overwhelming feeling of panic. It's like a rock 'n' roll concert, and what if I don't show up?" Top Authors on Annual Deadline Pressures

Monday, July 07, 2008

So few and far between are my books like Cold River or my entries on the Media Dragon … I love the moments when I do come up with an entry. Flowers like blogs grow out of dark moments. Therefore certain spirit of the moment – moments are vital as they affect the whole. Writer’s life is a succession of such inspiring moments …

Speaking of inspiring moments, I feel very lucky as I tend to come across many characters who know so much about inspiration and challenges. One such a character is a friendly lawyer who is also an iceberg swimmer - few people can claim to be as True Blue Blokes born and bred at Bondi as Mike Malley is ... So if you are exchanging contract or need a lawyer to represent you on almost any matter under the sun - czech Out the services of Michael Malley of Malleys Lawyers As Media Dragon is ranked £ 5 on Google lets hope the ranking is being helped by this entry ... Malley on Google

28 Years On and East Meets West Where Iron curtain and Cold Morava River used to flow ...

Water Bridge in Germany.... What a feat!

Six years, 500 million euros, 918 meters long.......now this is engineering!

This is a channel-bridge over the River Elbe and joins the former East and West Germany, as part of the unification project. It is located in the city of Magdeburg, near Berlin. The photo was taken on the day of inauguration.

To those who appreciate engineering projects, here's a puzzle for you armchair engineers and physicists. Did that bridge have to be designed to withstand the additional weight of ship and barge traffic, or just the weight of the water?

Answer:

It only needs to be designed to withstand the weight of the water! Why? A ship always displaces an amount of water that weighs the same as the ship, regardless of how heavily a ship may be loaded.

Remember your high school physics, and the fly in an enclosed bottle project? Similarly, the super sensitive scale proved that it didn't make any difference whether the fly was sitting on the bottom, walking up the side, or flying around. The bottle, air, and fly were a single unit of mass and always weighed the same.German Bridge That Is For Boats-Truth!

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Most of us do not like risk and uncertainty. That's too bad, because there's no shortage of either. Living at risk is jumping off the cliff and building your wings on the way down. Living at risk is taking a leaf out of Elie Wiesel's statement: to remain silent and indifferent is the greatest sin of all
Small swimming strokes and walking steps towards a much better world... That is sometimes the sins, moral failings and dark truths of the human condition find a home at Media Dragon...The hard core irony will undoubtedly be lost on some except gals and guys at the Google news, but by failing to reach NY Times reviews, Cold River, a book of a lifetime, succeeds brilliantly. Without any doubt the story of the human race is war
... “If a man hasn’t discovered something he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.” ~ Martin Luther King, Jr

We are in love with our own sins ...
We are not the boys we used to be. We are no longer desirable, We are off-putting in some way. It’s not just that We have put on weight, or that our face are puffy from the drinking and the lack of sleep; it’s as if people can see the damage written all over us, they can see it in my face, the way we hold ourselves the way we move ...

Maybe we are crazy. Maybe we will change the world: If you live life to the point of tears every Negative has a Positive, You just have to look for it. Blogs Help to filter the world ;-) Without Struggle/No Freedom ...

Sole survivors might often be thought of as anonymous, but we never want to be voiceless. Why true stories and icebergs say so much ... The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. Till taught by pain or borders less travelled, men really know not what freedom's worth: # Each Age Calls forth its own Bohemian Voice...

Sandra Cisneros tells us, Write about what makes you different.
Your readers want to see the world through your eyes ... A sole survivor explores the world where the 'other' fears to tread and creates the most unlikely true story you'll ever read. You are different and so is Cold River:

There may be no greater act of bravery for someone with a fear of needles than to donate blood. Of course, it's this kind of giving that is so important to maintaining the Red Cross's life-saving stocks

What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist, wrote Salman Rushdie. The Iron Curtain came down since Rushdie's novel, the Satanic Verses, earned the Booker Prize-winning novelist death threats, but the question persists.

MEDIA DRAGON We search the world ... So you can read thoughtful and down to earth media dragons at one place

Can one person make a difference? It's easy to be cynical about the power of one. But a person's importance, so difficult to quantify in life, is perhaps more easily measured in death – and the gaping holes left behind